


burning

by andnowforyaya



Category: EXO (Band), NCT (Band), SHINee, SuperM (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - True Blood Fusion, Angst, Bars and Pubs, Blood, M/M, Sex Work, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-22
Updated: 2019-10-22
Packaged: 2020-12-28 13:30:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21137489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andnowforyaya/pseuds/andnowforyaya
Summary: Ten was not from around here; Jongin could tell because his skin carried the scents from lands across the peninsula, across the ocean, and from these scents buried deep under his flesh, Jongin crafted Ten's story: Ten had traveled quite a bit, a migrant who followed a trail of his own making, wherever he could make some quick cash, and there was always quick cash to make in the vampire business. Jongin had seen it a hundred times before.





	burning

**Author's Note:**

> _All that was shown to me, sunlight_  
_Something so known to me, sunlight oh sunlight_  
#
> 
> [sunlight](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PELeEo33JXs%22), hozier

"What did you say your name was again?" Jongin looked the stranger up and down.

A man stood in the doorway to their office near the back of the club in a slinky black tank and jeans that looked painted on. Rings and studs decorated the lobes of his ears, and when he turned his face, Jongin saw the glint of a nose ring. He was more twig than man, arms rail thin and waist tiny. Not a lot of meat to him, but for some reason Jongin could tell his blood would be sweet. Any fat there was on his body seemed to have gathered in his thighs and ass, and Jongin felt an urge to wrap his hands around those succulent muscles and squeeze.

"Ten," he said sweetly. Ten was not from around here; Jongin could tell because his skin carried the scents from lands across the peninsula, across the ocean, and from these scents buried deep under his flesh, Jongin crafted Ten's story: Ten had traveled quite a bit, a migrant who followed a trail of his own making, wherever he could make some quick cash, and there was always quick cash to make in the vampire business. Jongin had seen it a hundred times before.

He wondered how many times Ten has been Bitten.

Taemin, his smile like a cat's before it pounced, leaned forward across the table between them and gestured for Ten to enter and take a seat. "The application you submitted said you've worked in an establishment like ours before."

Ten took his time looking around the office before sitting down, slowly turning this way and that as he took in the framed photos on the walls. Taemin and Jongin had come up through the centuries together, and had never been shy about memorializing their accomplishments. Bars and clubs and restaurants were their game -- underground at first, serving a select clientele, but over the decades as vampires slowly became accepted above the surface and into the human world, their audience had expanded. When Ten turned to peer at a photo of Taemin and Jongin vacationing in the south of France, Jongin saw a flash of ink scrawled across Ten's shoulder.

"Oh yeah, vamp bars are opening up everywhere," Ten said nonchalantly, dropping into the seat. He smiled and it reminded Jongin of a cracked mirror. It made something raw and primal twist inside of him. An urge to drag his knuckles across the shards.

Jongin sat back as Ten's sweet scent washed over him, recognizing his own bloodlust, and Taemin's eyes flicked to his in warning.

"And you've been a bartender at each of these?" Taemin continued. He'd always been better at dealing with humans.

Jongin watched as Taemin pulled up Ten's application on his laptop to scroll through his previous establishments. Some were names that he recognized, and some were not. Most recently, Ten had been working at a VIP-only club in Busan called  _ Blackout _ . That one, Jongin had heard of.

"Bartender," Ten purred with a smirk, shifting in his seat to cross his legs. "Do I look like a bartender to you?"

Jongin hissed at the disrespect, fangs extending. Ten didn't even flinch, merely turning that slinky, confident smirk in his direction. Then Ten blew him a kiss. Jongin pulled his fangs back, glowering darkly as Taemin stilled him with his hand on Jongin's thigh under the table.

Taemin laughed. "Our bartenders are just bartenders here, Mr. Lee," he said. "We won't pay you to fuck the clientele."

"Shame," Ten said.

Taemin cocked his head to the side and lowered the screen of his laptop so that he could stare directly into Ten's eyes. "I said  _ we  _ won't pay you," Taemin emphasized.

Ten quirked an eyebrow. "I heard what you said."

"Then we have an understanding." Taemin stood and Jongin followed suit. Ten was slower onto his feet, but graceful about it in a distinctly human way. Jongin's nostrils flared at the wave of sweetness in the air -- lemongrass and coconut and pandan. He could almost taste it. His mouth watered and his fangs itched just behind the surface of his gums. Ten looked at him knowingly, and held his hand out to shake.

"Welcome to  _ The Manor _ , Mr. Lee," Taemin said, shaking Ten's hand first. He brought that small, fragile hand up to his lips and kissed the backs of Ten's knuckles. "We look forward to what you'll contribute."

Jongin shook his hand next. He could feel the warmth of Ten's blood under his skin. When he kissed the back of his hand, he smelled Taemin first, and then the human.

Both were intoxicating.

.

It wasn’t like they really  _ needed  _ Ten. But one of their bartenders had just quit to go work at the club across the city, and he’d taken some of his regulars with him. Taemin had decided to put the job ad out there on the off chance that a diamond would come through in the rough, and Ten had walked through their very heavy double doors. 

At first, Jongin suspected Ten to be part-witch. Vampires were the only supernatural beings who could cast glamours over humans to get them to do their bidding (when they could get away with it, now that _everyone_ seemed to know about this little vampire trick), and yet somehow, as he watched Ten work behind the bar, he thought maybe Ten had cast a glamour over the patrons as well. 

Oh, how they fawned over him for a wink or a smile. The tips Ten collected in the tip jar every night he worked were some of the largest amounts Jongin had ever seen, and he’d seen a lot. On more than one occasion, he swore he saw the gold band of a wedding ring in the jar. 

He brought only the largest tippers into the Dungeon under  _ The Manor _ . Sometimes they were human. More often, they weren’t. And Jongin would watch the door that led to the sub-levels of the establishment all night until he re-emerged, whole and unharmed.

“What do you watch him so closely for?” Taemin asked him one night, as they were going to ground. Dusk was fast on the horizon. “That’s what we hired Jaehyun to do.”

“I think he is a witch,” Jongin said with a snarl.

Taemin’s laughter rang out, echoing off the walls. “He is a witch that brings us fortune, then. Our good luck charm. Keep him safe for me while I’m in Japan, would you?”

The order felt like a lover’s caress over Jongin’s skin, innocuous at first before it dug in deep, deep into the dead marrow of his bones. “I will, Sire,” Jongin said.

.

_ The Manor _ was closed on Sunday nights, but most of the time Ten, soft and vulnerable in long sleeves and glasses, was still there, chatting with Taemin at the bar under bright lights. Taemin looked at Ten with a hunger that Jongin knew Taemin would never act upon, but it bubbled under the surface of every single one of their interactions. And then Taemin was gone, jetted off to Japan saying he was going to check on their properties in Tokyo when Jongin knew the real reason was because Baekyun was visiting their corner of Seoul and that Taemin would burn a silver cross into his body if it meant he could avoid him forever. Jongin had never understood what had happened between them, and he didn’t care to.

Jongin also didn’t understand Ten. He was alive but flirted daily with death. He smiled when he didn’t mean it. He gave off an aura that he was both infuriatingly untouchable and ready to be torn apart. Maybe this was why he was so popular with his clients -- he made them mad with lust. Jongin imagined him as a spider spinning a silk spell around the eyes of everyone who saw him. You didn’t realize the web was there until it was too late, and then you were stuck watching him smile and dance and flirt with everyone who wasn’t you.

Sometimes on Sundays, Ten would sit at the bar while Jongin prepared the club for Monday night and wondered why Ten didn’t go home.

“We aren’t your friends, you know,” Jongin said to him one evening, feeling particularly cruel and uncertain. He was like a newborn again, emotion roiling inside of him when he should have been dead and detached and cold. He hated it. Ten was just at the bar, reading something on his phone. He wore rings on his fingers and there were bruises on his neck and Jongin was angry about that. About how careless someone had been with him.

Ten blinked at him, his eyes dark and wide. “I know,” he said softly, frowning. 

“How much longer will you do this?” Jongin asked.

Ten chewed on his bottom lip. His scent reminded Jongin of lychees tonight. Lychees and palm sugar and the ocean as it was three hundred years ago: clean and fresh with a bite of salt in the air. 

“Probably until I die,” Ten said. He went back to his phone. 

Jongin cursed under his breath. He had to go to ground.

.

Every night, Jongin watched the door to the Dungeon, and every night, Ten re-emerged from the sub-levels with pupils blown wide and that fractured, kaleidoscope smile carved into his face. His scent started to spoil, like fruit left out too long. Overly sweet to the point of being sickly. And yet the vamps still swarmed to him like flies.

Jongin watched him for the bruises around his neck, for the pulse that jumped at his wrists, for the way his bare skin prickled in the chilled air as he surfaced into the main level of the club. Signs that Ten was alive. Ten would find him in the thinning crowd and take his sweater from Jongin’s fingers and sometimes they would step outside for a smoke, or sometimes Jongin would give Ten the key to the office so he could nap for a bit before closing out the evening. 

He didn’t think he was a witch anymore.

Maybe he was part-Fae.

Then one night, Ten didn’t come back up the stairs. Instead, Jaehyun appeared in front of Jongin, the expression on his face all that Jongin needed to see before he was following him down into the Dungeon.

“What should I do with the client?” Jaehyun asked. It reeked of blood down here. Lychee and pandan and coconut mixed with copper. Above ground, Baekhyun was closing down the club and forcing people out, apologizing for the inconvenience and offering to eat the cost of their bills. It was something he did so well, placating humans and creatures alike.

Jongin was not so kind nor merciful. “If you haven’t staked him already, leave him in silvers outside and let him wait for the sun.”

.

Ten lay naked in a slippery pool of his own blood on the bed. He was drowning in it, convulsing, trembling. Jongin went to him, cradling him against his own body. He was so light he felt immaterial. Jongin’s gums itched with hunger, and his belly ached with it. He wanted so badly to sink his teeth into the open wound at Ten’s throat. The blood was so dark it was nearly purple, and Ten’s lips were turning blue. 

“Please,” Ten rasped, clutching at Jongin’s shirt, pressing his forehead to where Jongin’s heart would be beating if he were alive.

“Please what?” Jongin asked.

There was no response. Ten fell limp as a ragdoll in his arms as Jongin crushed him against his chest. His heart felt like a black hole.

.

Jongin’s eyes flew open when he knew that Ten was awake. It was like someone had switched on a flashlight. His chest filled with panic and confusion, and he knew immediately that it was Ten’s panic, Ten’s confusion. In a moment, he was above ground and in the bedroom he had carried Ten to in the home he shared with Taemin, the door to the bedroom having splintered into wood chips in his haste to get through it. 

“Fuck, Jongin!” Ten screamed when Jongin burst through, surprised. No, terrified. That was terror that Jongin tasted in the air. Ten was swaddled in blankets, dressed in one of Jongin’s old sweaters, but he still looked cold, shaking as he was. “Fuck, fuck, fuck--”

“You’re okay,” Jongin said, holding up his hands and coming around the bed more slowly. “Ten,  _ breathe _ .”

“I’m alive,” Ten whispered hysterically. He curled up into a tight ball under the covers and didn’t breathe and, instead, started to cry. “Fuck.”

Jongin slipped under the covers with him, slow so as not to startle him again. He held him until he fell back asleep.

.

For weeks, Ten stayed away from the Dungeon. He wouldn’t even look towards the door. Jongin certainly didn’t mind; he liked having Ten right where he could see him. 

At the end of Ten’s shifts he’d find Jongin and slide his fingers between the layers of Jongin’s suit jacket and shirt and they’d go out for a smoke together until the sun was just about to rise. Maybe it was coming back from the edge of death that made the sharp edge of Ten’s profile gleam silver in the night, like a blade. The ink scrawled across the backs of Ten’s shoulders was a thorny tangle of vines and wine-colored roses. With sudden, stark realization, Jongin realized he had watched the art slowly drip down Ten’s back like a stain. How much time had passed without him knowing? How many nights had passed between them, just like this?

“Why didn’t you let me die, that night?” Ten asked one morning as the sky was turning orange, the same color as the burnt end of the cigarette when Ten inhaled. 

Jongin was quiet. He couldn’t quite work it out himself. 

Ten turned to him in his silence, in his hesitation. “Did you give me your blood to save me, or so that I’d fall in love with you?” he asked, blowing smoke into Jongin’s face.

The sun threatened to come up over the horizon. Jongin stood up and scowled, a storm cloud brewing in his chest. “Who’d want your love?” He scoffed. “I have to go inside.”

.

Jongin wasn’t an idiot. He knew what happened when vampires shared their Blood with humans, and he’d shared his with Ten, anyway.

.

There was a customer at the bar who wouldn’t leave Ten alone. Jongin sat in a corner booth and watched, still as a statue, as the customer dragged his fingers across Ten’s wrist when he refilled his drink -- B-positive -- and licked his lips when Ten’s back was turned. All night, like this, and each touch of his fingers against Ten’s wrist laid another brick of panic in his chest, and for a moment he thought it was his own panic.

When the bricks became a wall that cut off the air in Ten’s lungs, Jongin realized what a fool he’d been. He had Jaehyun kick the customer out as Ten tried to breathe from the little ball he’d curled himself into behind the bar.

“What’s wrong with you?” Jongin lifted Ten into his arms and Ten scowled at him, his cheeks losing color as he hyperventilated.

“You’re -- nicer -- in my dreams,” he gasped.

“Hang onto me.” Jongin ran back to his and Taemin’s house as Ten screamed. He brought Ten up to the bedroom in a blur of motion and deposited him as comfortably as he could onto the bed, sitting on the mattress and holding a hand against Ten’s chest so he wouldn’t try to get up. Ten folded his small, thin hands over Jongin’s. The human’s heart was hammering inside his ribcage with the speed of a hummingbird’s wings. 

“ _ Breathe _ ,” Jongin reminded him, again. It seemed Ten needed a lot of reminders of just how fragile he -- how fragile  _ humans  _ \-- were. 

Ten wheezed, crying because no matter how hard he tried, his lungs refused to take in air. It took minutes that felt like hours, but finally, Ten’s breathing stabilized, and his cheeks turned a rosy, pinkish color. 

“Why’d you bring me here?” Ten murmured, eyelids drooping, exhausted from his fit.

“It’s safe here,” Jongin explained. “And you’ve never invited me into your home.”

Ten didn’t say anything for so long that Jongin assumed he’d fallen asleep, but when he stood to leave, Ten’s hand tightened around his wrist. Jongin sat back down.

“You’re all I can think about,” Ten whispered. “You, and that night.”

“I know,” Jongin said. He cupped his hand around the side of Ten’s neck, where his pulse was flickering. His incisors itched behind his gums, and he let them fall. Ten gasped when they extended but gazed at them as though hypnotized. “When I saved you that night,” Jongin said. “I made you mine.”

Ten smirked, the wickedness in his expression delicious. “You think you’re the only vamp whose blood I’ve tasted?”

Jongin shook his head and pressed his thumb against Ten’s pulse. He dug in deep, until the skin was straining, until Ten was pushing at his hand to stop the pressure. “No,” he said. “But I will be the last.”

.

Ten’s skin jumped away from his wherever they touched. Jongin knew he was cold as marble and probably uncomfortable to hold, but Ten still clung to him anyway, squeezing his thighs around Jongin’s hips and digging his heels into Jongin’s back; he couldn’t absorb any of Ten’s heat into his body, but when he was inside of him he closed his eyes and imagined the sun splashing light and heat across his shoulders without it burning. Standing outside under a blue sky. Opening his eyes to light, natural and golden. 

Ten was flushed and radiant underneath him, blood blooming just under his skin, and Jongin was swimming in coconut and lychee and rose as he rocked into him, slow and gentle so he could catalog how each thrust manifested as pleasure on Ten’s face.

Ten begged him to go faster, begged him to fuck him harder, but Jongin would not do it. Finally, Ten bared his throat, back arching. “It has to be you. Please, Jongin. It has to be you.”

Jongin leaned down closer to Ten’s heat. Here, so close to his skin, Ten’s scent swirled thick and dense and intoxicating. Jongin felt drunk off of him. He licked a stripe up the side of Ten’s neck and then scraped his teeth down along the path he’d made.

“Oh,” Ten cried, shaking. “Jongin, please--”

Jongin Bit him. Fresh, hot blood spilled into his mouth, sweet and sustaining. 

He was perfect. Ten was perfect.

.

Baekhyun left, and Taemin came back. He sat behind his desk in their office with his legs kicked up on the surface and a smarmy, glittery grin on his lips, but his eyes were as black as coals.

“I said to keep him safe, Kai,” Taemin teased him. “Not to fall in love.”

Jongin sank down into the seat opposite Taemin, across from him. It was the seat Ten had taken all those months ago when he’d first sauntered into their club. He leaned forward, elbows on the tops of his thighs. “Are you jealous?”

The smile dropped from Taemin’s face. “Will you turn him?”

Jongin played with the fraying upholstery in the arms of the chair. Ten was in the bar outside, fixing drinks for customers like he always was. If Jongin focused, he could hear the slight irregularities of Ten’s heartbeat as perfectly as if he were laying his head across Ten’s chest. Could smell coconut in the air.

“No,” he said.

Taemin quirked an eyebrow, curious. “Why not?”

“Because he wants me to kill him,” Jongin said. 

He thought of Ten and his pretty fingers clutching at Jongin’s arms, the forest growing on his back, the chains dripping from his earlobes. Ten was soft and breakable and warm. He was the closest thing to the sun that Jongin would ever get again.

.

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos appreciated <3
> 
> [my twitter](https://twitter.com/andnowforyaya) | [my cc](http://curiouscat.me/andnowforyaya)


End file.
